The majority of us like routine and familiarity. Mess with someone’s habitual routine and watch them start to sweat, stress and squirm.

They also say that a change is as good as a holiday but is all change good?

Facebook’s new timeline is now live on both the personal profiles and pages and it has taken the known and familiar and replaced it with a very new design.

Steve Jobs said in an interview with Wired magazine in 1997 “People think that design is how it looks, but it goes much deeper than that, it is actually how it works”

So does the new Facebook timeline design “work”?

The impact for business is that it needs to evaluate the implications of these changes to ensure that they maintain their engagement and utilise the stronger visual format that the brand “pages” now have.

So the changes are in place and the dust has settled, what are the implications for the managers, administrators and users of the “new”Facebook timeline “page”.

That was the main message in the USA Today article titled, Study: Social media a bust for small businesses, published on April 17th, 2013. From the news item:"About 61% of small businesses don't see any return on investment on their social-media activities, according to a survey released Tuesday from Manta, a social network for small businesses. Yet, almost 50% say they've increased their time spent on social media, and only 7% have decreased their time. What businesses are trying to get out of social media: 36% said their goal was to acquire and engage new customers, 19% said to gain leads and referrals, and 17% said to boost awareness. Facebook was most cited as the hardest to maintain social-media platform, according to the survey." There is a big lesson in this data...

What you want from social media may be very different from what it is.

It's called aquaponics- a gardening system that combines hydroponics (water-based planting) and aquaculture (fish farming). It's been hailed as the future of farming: it uses less water (up to 90% less than traditional gardening), doesn't attract soil-based bugs and produces two types of produce (both plants and fish).

Aquaponics has become popular in recent years among urban gardeners and DIY tinkerers, but Maundu- who is trained in industrial robotics- has taken the agricultural craft one step further and made his gardens smart. Using sensors (to detect water level, pH and temperature), microprocessors (mostly the open-source Arduino microcontroller), relay cards, clouds and social media networks (Twitter and Facebook), Maundu has programmed his gardens to tweet when there's a problem (i.e. not enough water) or when there's news (i.e. an over-abundance of food to share).Maundu himself ran from agriculture in his native Kenya- where he saw it as a struggle for land, water and resources. This changed when he realized he could farm without soil and with little water via aquaponics and that he could apply his robotics background to farming.

Today he runs Kijani Grows ("Kijani" is Swahili for green), a small startup that designs and sells custom aquaponics systems for growing food and attempts to explore new frontiers of computer-controlled gardening. Maundu believes that by putting gardens online, especially in places like West Oakland (where his solar-powered gardens are totally off the grid), it's the only way to make sure that farming remains viable to the next generation of urban youth.

Wondering which social network is most effective at generating b2b leads? What marketing technique generates leads with the highest close ratio? What the best day of the week is for Facebook posting? Which U.S. city produces the largest share of “pins”on Pinterest?

Find the answers to those questions and many, many more in this collection of 72 fascinating social media marketing facts and stats for 2012.

Social media-savvy degree holders enjoy a lush buffet of options when it comes to finding information about navigating the scary new adulthood graduation dumps them into. Twitter users benefit from soaking up tips and tricks in 140-characters-or-less chunks, requiring far less mental bandwidth and time than a clunky ol’ article.

Participating in regularly scheduled chats might very well prove especially useful as well, as sessions cover essential topics like job hunting, healthy living, grad school, and productivity, and allow for exchanging information in real time versus waiting on a response.

Robin Good: A few days ago Facebook has launched a new "curated" web magazine, called Facebook Stories, dedicated to showcase "people using Facebook in extraordinary ways".

Anyone can submit their story for review, and the most interesting ones are showcased on this page under a monthly theme.

Facebook Stories, does not have anythng to do with an earlier project, terminated in 2011, which carried a similar name. On th other hand it is very similar to the Twitter Stories and Tumblr Storyboard curated initiatives.

From IBTimes: "In addition to video content, the Facebook Stories introduces several other features such as archival stories from the New Yorker magazine (content normally only accessible through a paywall), a Goodreads curated book list known as "The Bookshelf" and a Spotify-fueled and artist-curated tracklist known as "The Playlist."

The company will also produce a podcast and infographic corresponding to the theme."

Hootsuite is becoming the industry standard for social media management and is offering this great campus ambassador program. Do not know much details about the program benefits but none the less, a great tool and company to be a part of this upcoming school year. Good luck on your application!

Investors are giving up on Groupon (GRPN) and they're scrambling for the exits on Facebook (FB) too. Since Twitter is not publicly traded, they can't get out of that one as quickly.

Jean Cruz's insight:

"That’s not all — I estimate that Facebook is cutting U.S. productivity by 9.4%. That’s because a study in May 2011 found that Facebook users in the U.S. spend an average of 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the site. And if that time was spent working instead, those Facebook users could add $1.4 trillion to the U.S. economy." - WOW!

PSFK says, "To re-introduce the concept of ‘Summer Fridays’ to today’s dedicated workforce, ad agency, Amalgamated employed a unique strategy. ... professional window washers in New York and Chicago ... scale the windows of high rises, dressed in business suits. Instead of squeegees, they held up a series of signs" with Ultimat Vodka's message. Full story here: http://www.psfk.com/2012/08/window-washer-advertisements.html

Just because you’re online doesn’t mean that you can’t experience the world first-hand — or as close to first-hand as possible. Here are websites that feature virtual learning experiences, exposing online visitors to everything from history to geography, astronomy to ana

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